“I know.”
“You didn’t ask for this assessment,” Mikodez said, “but I’ll give it to you anyway. Did it never occur to you that if you’d been a standard-issue happy-go-lucky sociopath like the rest of us foxes, instead of a Crowned with Eyes visionary, a lot more people would be alive and a lot less evil would have been done?”
Ninefox Crowned with Eyes was Jedao’s signifier. During his lifetime it had been interpreted as an indication of his brilliance. But visionaries and the mad sometimes turned up with it, and they all knew how that story ended.
“If you were a ‘standard-issue happy-go-lucky sociopath’ yourself,” Jedao retorted, “you wouldn’t give a fuck about lives saved or lost.” His gaze shifted sideways. “Fox and hound, Shuos-zho, are you growing a vegetable on your desk? Is there a food shortage in the Citadel? I would have recommended something that offered a little more sustenance, personally.”
Transparent change of topic, which Mikodez had expected. Besides, it was nice to see Jedao taking an interest in something that wasn’t ordnance. Maybe he should send the swarm some cuttings? “That’s what my assistant said. Every so often I snip some leaves to put in my soup. Speaking of which, how are you enjoying Kel food? Is it very different from what you used to eat?”
“Don’t recognize what they’ve done to the pickles,” Jedao said drily, “and I’m afraid to ask about some of the fish. If they’re fish at all. So how many hexarchs has your assistant served?”
At least Jedao still recognized Shuos power structures. The Shuos who made a play for the hexarch’s seat were almost always foxes. Even then, only the vainglorious, the rabidly ambitious, or the terminally bored bothered with the exercise. (Mikodez thought of himself as a category three.) No: if you wanted to wield lasting influence, you skipped the dramatics, became a bureaucrat, and made yourself too indispensable to purge.
“I’m Zehun’s third hexarch,” Mikodez said matter-of-factly. “Of course, my predecessor only lasted three years before I happened to him.”
“Bullet? Poison? Point-blank knitting needle?”
Jedao had never had much imagination, even for Shuos infantry. “He was having a nervous breakdown,” Mikodez said. “He wanted to retire somewhere quiet and change his face and sex and, I’m not making this up, breed cockatiels. I visited her once afterward, to make sure she was doing all right. Lovely birds, cockatiels. I often think she got the better end of the deal, especially when I have to deal with budget allocations and my agents whine about not getting all the latest toys. Anyway, my assistant had to talk me out of bringing one of the birds home as a pet. Zehun’s such a killjoy sometimes.”
Jedao looked bewildered. “I realize it’s impertinent of me to ask, Shuos-zho, but why did you decide to become hexarch? Instead of taking up landscape architecture or tiger-taming or anesthesiology?”
Mikodez grinned at him. “Because I’m good at it and it’s fun. Not necessarily in that order. Honestly, even some of the Kel figure out that duty can be fun. You have some peculiar knot in your psyche that says everything has to be about suffering. But then, considering that you’re practically half-Kel, it’s not surprising you react like a hawk.”
Pointedly, Jedao held up his left hand and inspected his half-glove. “It’s just a uniform, Shuos-zho. You do have my transcripts from Shuos Academy, don’t you?”
“Yes, and I also happen to know how hard you had to work not to fail out of those math classes. But I’m not joking. At one point you had formation instinct.” Mikodez studied Jedao’s face intently. Thirty-five years later and they were winding back to the part of the conversation that Nirai Kujen had so disapproved of. They’d quarreled afterward, and then Zehun had yelled at Mikodez for getting into a fight with the Nirai hexarch on his home station. Worth it, though.
Jedao scoffed. “That’s preposterous. I’d know if they’d made me into a counterfeit Kel. Even outprocessing can’t suppress a memory that—” He fell silent, eyes going opaque as the uncertainty hit.
He didn’t remember this time, either. “Not a counterfeit,” Mikodez said. “You were the prototype. Where do you think they got the idea?”
Jedao met Mikodez’s eyes. His face had cleared of all expression, an obvious tell. He was silent for a long time. “You’re not lying to me.”
“My dear,” Mikodez said, “I shouldn’t have to remind you that sometimes the truth serves better than a lie.”
A longer silence. “Why would they get rid of formation instinct if they’d managed to inject me with it? I would have assumed that they’d want to leash me as tightly as possible.” Brief pause. “At least now I understand why they didn’t—didn’t just kill me. If they thought they could do this. If they did.” Jedao drew a shuddering breath, regrouped.
“I don’t know why they uninjected you,” Mikodez said. Also true, although Jedao was unlikely to believe him. “But it should be obvious to you who would have that information, if you can track him down.”
There was a chance that Kel Command’s hive memory, never entirely reliable, had degraded over time. Mikodez and Jedao both knew that Nirai Kujen had perfect recall, however. Getting Jedao to retrieve Kujen was a long shot, but Mikodez had nothing to lose.
“At a guess,” Mikodez said, “they gave up on it because the results were unreliable. You’d be a lousy Kel candidate to begin with, so even with modern techniques a standard injection wouldn’t take. Who knows how long they spent getting a psych surgeon”—meaning Kujen—“to do a custom job.”
“It’s redundant for you to give me more reasons to avoid Kel Command,” Jedao said.
“That wasn’t why I told you.” Mostly true.
“Then—?”
“Because you deserve to know.”
Jedao’s eyes widened. Then he laughed.
“You’re one of mine,” Mikodez said. “I despise seeing my people mishandled, but until very recently you’ve been under Kel jurisdiction, so there was only so much I could do.”
“Yes,” Jedao said, growing distant. “I remember when they told me that Khiaz-zho had signed me over to the Kel Arsenal. I don’t know why it came as such a shock. But I deserved no less.” More silence.
“Whatever’s on your mind, you might as well ask.”
“Is it true that you assassinate Shuos cadets?”
Interesting. Jedao was trying to gauge his moral fiber. Kel Command would have been singularly unamused. Or possibly gone out to get collectively drunk. (Did they ever do that? Intelligence was unclear on that point.) “My dear,” Mikodez said, “I’m happy to tell you the dirt, but you’re not good enough to determine whether I’m lying or not.”
“Try me anyway,” Jedao said.
“The answer is yes. I specifically targeted two cadets, whom my agents successfully terminated. There were no secondary casualties. The cadets were part of a heretic plot to blow up Shuos Academy Tertiary. The details are messy. I didn’t have a lot of time. Since I didn’t fancy a panic, I had my agents shoot them while they were playing some drinking game. The plot came much closer to succeeding than I generally like to admit.”
“Why not release the truth after the matter had been handled? Your academy commandant should have been able to keep the lid on a little panic.”
“You didn’t ask when the incident happened.” Mikodez grimaced. “I was twenty-seven. It was my second year as hexarch, and I didn’t have a lot of credibility. I felt it was more useful for people to be afraid of what I might do to top that.”
Jedao laughed wryly. “I can’t say I envy you your job, Shuos-zho. I was never tempted to try for it.”